Stress management to enthusiasm management.

This will be a little bit of a work shop for you to play along with the more you do the more benefit you will get.

When people are looking to get less stressed I feel they are focusing on the wrong thing. They are focusing on less stressed which is still stressed. They should be looking to get more excited, enthusiastic and passionate about life, or at least feel good every day, but i like going overboard and revving things up.

We are in a world that is growing ever more stressful the GLOBAL financial crisis the news filling us full of fear, recession in our countries and selfish self serving politicians.

The world is a difficult place and the vast majority of us feel helpless to do something about it. It is not a good state to be in every day.

How is listening to the news and all the other misery going on in the world helping you and the planet? And what the hell does all this have to do with stress management?

Every day we have things that we have to react to, to deal with, or to cope with, one way or another we will have these stressors in our life no matter how rich or how poor we are. Some shit is going to happen. So why worry about it. Why play it over and over in our heads?
I can hear you say but i have to worry about it, who is going to put food on the table?

Let me ask you a question. What is the difference between worrying and thinking?

Does worrying about something make you feel bad or good? Whereas how does thinking about something make you feel. Pretty neutral I am guessing neither good nor bad. Which state do you think will get you the best results?

Worry sounds a bit like this. I have to, oh god, what am i to do? It is full of negative emotions, fear and pain. That is bound to make you feel worse, more stressed, more hopeless and less in control of your life and playing it over and over again in your head is doing no one any good.

Is that state of stress and hopelessness a resourceful state that you can think clearly about a solution? Probably not.

How could you dig your way out of any situation, if you have put yourself under so much pressure you can’t think? And sometimes don’t want to think about it.

As I am writing this I am hoping you are starting to feel the feelings of stress in your body. Your chest is feeling a bit tight and a slight feeling of impatience. I know I am. But this is a good thing for this post.

So now let’s Take a deeep breath and relax. Through your nose and out through your mouth. Have you done it? How does it feel? A bit better I am assuming. Take another deep breath and relax even further if you want.

I am hoping you’re playing along and can feel the difference when we start to take charge of our thoughts and feelings by simply breathing relaxing and noticing that we are stressed. Then we can go from stressed to more relaxed in a few seconds.

As you may have noticed the more we talked about stress the more stressed we got and as soon as we took action on that stress (breathing deeply and relaxing) the stress dissipated and we felt better. So what we think about and talk about we get more of.

But what if we flipped the switch from focusing on being less stressed to being excited about our day.
What would you be focusing on? Feeling good I bet.
How would your language change? Would it go from oh god my life is over i can’t afford to feed myself. To I’m going to take charge of my day and do something productive.

Pick a problem you have, that you have played over and over in your head that is so painful you don’t want to deal with it.
Now find some way of making it sound adventurous or epic or fun or a joke. Put a smile on your face and say it out loud. Write it down like your writing an adventure novel.

My problem was that I had chronic fatigue (through stressing myself out and focusing on the wrong things) so I stopped focusing on being tired all the time to focusing on what I could do in the bit of time I had while I was able to function. I said to myself I’m going to get something done today that is productive and make me feel like I’ve gotten a win and I started taking note of those wins at the end of the day. So I went from focusing on my fatigue to focusing on my wins. Every day bit by bit i got more wins and felt better about myself I felt more powerful and more in charge. Then the big breakthrough came. What if I said, I’m going to feel epic for the bit I’m not fatigued. So I got up each morning read my goals out loud and put every bit of energy into feeling great for the day. I said to myself, I feel terrific, I feel terrific, I feel terrific until I got my emotions into it, (that is the most important bit getting your emotions into it) I started to feel energised more and more until after a few day’s it became habit to feel that way and now I am living full of energy and enthusiasm. Life is still the same i still have all the same issues that got me into that place but now I deal with them in a productive enthusiastic way.

All I did was flip the switch to what I wanted and put the emotion into it. I was sick of feeling tired and stressed, but that is not what I wanted, I wanted to be full of energy, not not stressed.

How much easier would life be if you turned every stress into an adventure, an opportunity to kick its ass and have a good time?

Turn that stress into success and focus on winning each day and living with relentless enthusiasm. With a little practice you can.
Best of luck.

Ever felt stuck, frustrated, powerless

Ever felt stuck, frustrated, powerless, but don’t know what you can do about it.

I have spent years with my head absolutely done in with frustration. The horrible tight feeling in my chest saying, I want to do something but I can’t. All the, I shoulds and I cant’s rattling around in my head. I should be making more money, I should be doing better in college, I should have a job, I should be happy, but I can’t, but I’m no good at that. Relentless thinking that leads to nowhere but more frustration. Then because you’re so frustrated every day, you can’t actually do anything properly and that builds on its self, to where you start to believe you’re no good at, or can’t stick at anything long enough to make it happen. Your self esteem / belief start to diminish.

I’ve spent the past 4 years full on dedicated to getting rid of these feelings. Initially I was so frustrated and my brain was churning so much, that I was waking up already burnt out for the day ahead. I would wake up and barely be able to think my brain was already so exhausted. I would only be alive for a really short while before I had to go back to bed. This went on for nearly two years where I could barely live.

I was so lucky to be living at home with my parents at the time, because I literally couldn’t take care of myself. I went to the doctors (I can honestly say they haven’t a clue) I went to nutritionists and dieticians, hypnotherapists and spent thousands on books, courses and anything I could get my hands on to get out of this rut.

Eventually I took the reins and decided to figure it out myself because none of the people I went to see had any idea what was wrong or how to help me.
I had read up on NLP and Life Coaching and through a recommendation by a very good friend I did a course in Life Coaching. This was the tipping point; this is where I started to take charge of my life again.

I have often heard about people hitting rock bottom and their life changing for the better. I feel that I have been dragged along the bottom, but at some point I decided to turn over and stop dragging my face along the ground. As soon as I turned over I could see a whole new world. I could see there was more to life than what I could see.

As I dug deeper into Life Coaching and personal development, I realised that what I believed isn’t fact and that what I believed was often wrong, actually it is always wrong.

What we believe is just what we believe, it is not fact, it is just a belief. Like when we are children and believe in the tooth fairy. The fairy definitely exists until we have proof it doesn’t.

These beliefs go further they are not just psychological they manifest physically too. Is eating meat good or tasty, millions of people believe it is. Whereas millions vegans believe it isn’t, so much so if they were forced to eat meat they would vomit it up because they believe that it is disgusting. The reality is, its just meat, it is not good or bad, it just what it is, but our beliefs say we can or cannot eat it, that it is disgusting or beautiful.

What all this meant for me was that maybe I just believed I was no good at working, or college, or whatever other rubbish I believed about myself. This enabled me to challenge everything I believed in. Maybe I could actually get good at something. So I started to stop myself and ask is that true? Often it wasn’t.

I then started to stop looking at what I was doing wrong and badly, to what I was doing right and well. I realised that I was doing a lot of things right on a day to day basis. This was amazing to me as I had never looked or paid attention to what I was doing well before all I ever did was beat myself up for any tiny little mistake I made.

Once I started to realise that I did some stuff well I wanted to do more and see what happened. So I started reading more and more personal development books listening to audio books I have probably read one particular book at least 50 times. My targets where set, what else do I not know that will make me feel better. The pain of being frustrated was driving me on, I did not want to feel that way and these books and all the stuff I was learning was helping me feel better and better. For the first time in my life I had a goal and that goal was not to feel shitty anymore.

Bit by bit day by day I gradually changed my focus from looking at all the bad things in my life to all the good things. My attitude went from I can’t, to maybe I can, to I can.

As my attitude changed so did my energy and levels of frustration. As is started being nice to myself and building my self confidence, my energy levels went up and up and up, to where I am enthusiastic every day and have the energy and belief to do what I want to do.

The world around us and the people in it are all geared up to make us feel bad, school and good intentioned friends often tell us we are doing this or that wrong, or that we cannot do a particular thing.

What I want to impress in you with this post is that we can choose what we listen to. We can choose to listen to our teachers, parents, friends and even our own internal dialogue. But what I have found to be far better better is making up our own mind and ignoring all the negative stuff and just focus on what you are doing right, because that will fill you full of energy, enthusiasm and that will grow you and your abilities. You (with practice) will live with relentless enthusiasm.